Apple advertises the MacBook Air (mid-2012) battery as lasting “up to 7 hours”, but we’re pleased to report that Apple’s marketing is understating that number by as much as an hour and a half. In our (admittedly unscientific) tests based on real-world use case scenarios, the battery life on the new MacBook Air is simply … Read More
For the developers and UI designers out there, Apple’s developer docs show us how to highlight non-retina images in red, making it easy to determine if the 2x image assets are loading properly for retina displays. You can set the image tinting to occur in all apps, or on a per-app basis. Enable Non-Retina Image … Read More
Need to quickly convert a value in one currency to another? You don’t need to hit the web to learn the latest exchange rates, instead you can turn to the trusty old Calculator app. The OS X Calculator is bundled with a variety of built-in conversion tools, currency included. Using it is simple: Launch Calculator … Read More
Pushing towards next months public release, Apple has released a second developer update to OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview 4. The new build is 12A256 and the update appears to focus primarily on security features and updates, and 9to5mac points out the latest build will check daily for security updates. Developers running OS X … Read More
QuickTime Player automatically rounds the corners of any video window, a nice touch that fits in line with the rest of the OS X desktop and window experience. If you don’t like the rounded movie window appearance though, you can easily disable them: Quick QuickTime Launch Terminal and enter the following command: defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX … Read More
Anytime you create an alias in Mac OS X the resulting alias of a file, app, or folder, will include the arrow icon in the corner. This makes it easy to identify any item as an alias, but you can hide the alias arrow badge from icons if you don’t want to see them. Here … Read More
Chrome’s “Most Visited” thumbnails capture snapshots of the websites you most frequently access. These thumbnails can very convenient but they can also be embarrassing, thankfully they are fairly easy to clear out: How to Remove Thumbnails from Chrome Most Visited List on Mac Quit Chrome From the Mac Finder, hit Command+Shift+G and enter the following … Read More
How many times have you typed something to discover the last two characters are in the wrong order? You know, when “the” turns into “teh” and “something into “somethign”, a fairly common general mistype. Well the Mac has a solution to this, with a great little keystroke that swaps the last two characters.
If you’re wondering who made the SSD (flash storage) drive on a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro it’s fairly easy to determine: Pull down the  Apple menu and choose “About This Mac”, then click on “More Info” Click “System Report” Look under “Hardware” for the “Serial-ATA” entry and select it Expand the chipset and … Read More
The optional Path bar shows the complete filesystem path to the current working directory in any Finder window of Mac OS X. This optional window-dressing item has more use beyond that though, because not only does it show you the present directory, it’s also interactive. In short, that means you can double-click the individual folders … Read More
Satellite Eyes is a neat free app that automatically adjusts your desktops background wallpaper to satellite images of your current location. Commute to work and you’ll see a new background than what you do at home, fly across the country or world and it’ll change with you. For a simple app there are a fair … Read More
If you travel internationally with a Mac or you split life between different parts of the world you can make your computing life easier by adjusting regional settings based on your current location. Mac OS X makes this very easy to do and you can switch from US to metric, change currency, and set the … Read More
If you use Instagram and you’ve ever wanted to download all the pictures you’ve taken you’ve probably noticed there is no built-in option to do so. Thankfully there are several free options that let you back up all photos from Instagram and export them all directly to your computer. We’ve narrowed it down to the … Read More
We have covered a handful of different ways to disable the internal screen on a MacBook Pro/Air while keeping the laptops lid open and the computer turned on, ranging from a command line approach, dimming brightness or using sleep, and even a silly magnet trick, but for whatever reason there have always been a few … Read More
If you’ve ever entered a lengthy command into the terminal and upon execution discovered a syntax error, a “no such file or directory”, or “command not found” message because you made a typo, you’ll love this quick tip that lets you rerun the last executed command while replacing the erroneous syntax. You’ll need to be … Read More
Some of you may have experienced the unfortunate kernel panic on boot problem that is occurring on certain Macs after they’ve installed recent software updates. If you haven’t installed the “Thunderbolt Software Update 1.2” yet it’s best to avoid it completely until a fix comes from Apple. If it’s too late and you’re experiencing crashes … Read More
Apple revealed an all new “next generation” MacBook Pro at WWDC 2012 today, it’s the first retina Mac to be made available and comes in addition to their standard MacBook Pro line. The enclosure looks similar to existing unibody MacBook Pro models, though it is significantly thinner and lighter than any previous models.
It’s always a good idea to backup a file if you’re going to be making some changes to it and you’re uncertain of the outcome. In the Finder this is as simple as just selecting the file and hitting Command+D to create a duplicate of the file in question, but in the command line you … Read More
